FiddlerNotes – Seasons

Seasons are something that I’m not well acquainted with.  Not Holiday seasons, or Summer Break or anything like that.  I mean actual weather and temperature change sorta seasons.  Let me explain… No, there is too much! Let me sum up. 

I.  Am a desert bunny.  Born in Vegas (Henderson if you want to pick nits) and moved to Phoenix as a youngling, I’ve never experienced a year’s worth of four separate seasons.  Here, there is “feck it’s cold…”, “Ugh it’s hot”, and “Don’t go outside, you’ll get heat stroke in five minutes.”  We very rarely get more than a couple weeks of ‘brisk’ before the cold, and what passes for spring is a couple of pleasant days before the heat sets in, especially with climate change making the ‘cook an egg on the pavement’ days number more and more each year…I digress.

So I kinda glaze over when my bandmates all talk about shoveling snow taller than they are (and let’s face it, all of them are at least 8 inches taller than me), or icicles, or walking on frozen lakes.  Or even other seasons like hearing the burble of streams during the thaw, and birds migrating in and out.  Or pulling everything you can in from the garden before the first hard frost.

Heck, we don’t get down below freezing every year consistently.

The thing is, for all that I do not function well in the cold, I want to experience all of that, more than a little bit.  I want to see the riotous change of colour on the trees.  I want to drink hot cider on the porch with my feet up on the line of squash that everyone pitched in to pull before the night’s freeze spoiled them.  I want to crunch through the autumn loam and watch my dog gallumph through the leaves while I drink cocoa. I want to go snowshoeing, and skiing, and sledding. Hells, I even kinda want to try ice fishing.  I want to see the first wee leaves sticking up out of the last of the snow in the spring, and leave salt licks and treats out for the deer that made it through the winter.

Am I willing to move to do it, *laughs* probably not.  Too many threads tie me here, happily so.

But some day, I’d love to meet Spring, Autumn, and Winter, shake their hands.  Spend some time.

Summer I know a little too well…

So, for those of you reading this that live where there are four real seasons, I salute you. To all that live in LODAS (Land of Dust and Sun) with me, solidarity.  And to Everyone, everywhere, may the current holidays find you healthy, peaceful, and joyful.